


The Mysterious Miss Stark

by OrangeTabby



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Caregiving, Explicit Language, F/M, Firefighters, Fluff, Humor, Modern Westeros, Workplace Accident, Workplace Injury, wildlife rescue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:35:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25868305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrangeTabby/pseuds/OrangeTabby
Summary: Firefighter Sandor Clegane has developed feelings for Sansa Stark.By all accounts, she is a thoroughly decent person. Sending food to the station, caring for baby animals, being nice to her family. She is practically perfect in every way, and he is smitten.There is only one problem.They have never actually met.
Relationships: Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark
Comments: 150
Kudos: 353





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yetis_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yetis_girl/gifts).



> Written for [Yetis_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yetis_girl/pseuds/Yetis_girl) from her prompt and with her ideas 😁

He hadn’t met the mysterious Miss Stark, but Sandor Clegane was pretty fucking sure he had feelings for her.

She was obviously utterly and irrevocably out of his league. Smart, kind, and sweet. The type of woman who would and should run screaming from the likes of him.

Sandor often found his thoughts returning to her, though.

He had heard plenty about her.

In fact, he was currently hearing plenty about her.

“And then Sansa told Joffrey he couldn’t please a woman even if he actually bothered to try, and then hung up. So brutal. She’s usually super polite, it’s like she became me on the phone,” said Arya Stark from the back seat of the truck, a note of pride in her voice.

Sandor could see his captain, Benjen Stark, shudder out of the corner of his eye. “She’s my niece, I shouldn’t be hearing this.”

“He’s been hassling her for ages though.” By the sounds of it, Arya was adjusting her kit as she talked. Bad practice to do it in the truck. “She left him, but he can’t leave well enough alone. She said she’d finally had enough of him whining that she’d broken up with him.”

Sandor grunted, but kept his hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road. “This Joffrey sounds like a cunt.”

“He was. He treated her like shit and then cheated on her.” Arya huffed an annoyed breath. “Good fucking riddance. She said he was rubbish in bed too.”

Benjen groaned audibly. “Again, my niece.”

Jon Snow reached through from the back seat and patted Benjen on the shoulder. “We all had to grow up some time,” he said. “And think, when Robb and Jeyne’s twins arrive you’ll be a Great Uncle.”

Even in Sandor’s peripheral vision, Benjen visibly winced. “Don’t remind me, I feel bloody old.”

The Stark family pulled Sandor into their orbit as soon as he started working for the Winterfell Fire Department, eighteen months ago. He did not exactly have experience with functional and stable families, but inexplicably the Starks always seemed happy to include him.

Beers with Benjen after work. Watching the big game with Jon on the occasional Friday evening at the station. Arguing with Arya about bullshit.

He had even met other family members. Arya’s father Ned, Jon’s mother Lyanna. Apparently hordes of Starks lived in Winterfell.

It was, however, the sister that intrigued him. Sandor often found himself thinking about the mysterious Miss Sansa Stark at the worst possible times.

Like right now, in the fire truck, racing towards a blaze. Dressed in his full turnout gear with sirens blaring and his gut churning with the usual pre-fire nerves.

Miss Stark, Sansa, first came to his attention when she moved in with her sister a few months ago. It was after the failed relationship from when she lived down in that shitheap Kings Landing. Sansa had sent care packages along with her sister for all the staff. Who did that? Who sent food to a bunch of motley firefighters they didn’t even know?

His scepticism had not stopped him from eating the food. He would never forget the traditional Riverlands smoked trout pie, with tiny pastry fish cunningly worked into the crust. Or the batches of fried chicken, one lot carefully labelled as having extra cayenne pepper and one lot without, depending on spice preference. Bloody delicious.

He couldn’t believe he’d never met her. It wasn’t like she never visited the station, though that happened less now she worked as a wildlife carer.

Every time she turned up in person, he happened to be elsewhere. On a job, or having a mandated day off or away for training. Every fucking time.

If nothing else, he’d like to thank her in person for all the food.

He dragged his thoughts away from her, yet again, and focused on driving. Heavy traffic clogged up the road, and he switched the sirens on to get drivers to clear some space. The alleged best practice was to use lights and not sirens in the dense urban areas, but for fucks sake there was a fire.

The radio crackled and buzzed, finally resolving into the voice of Tormund Giantsbane, informing them that the building was showing signs of destabilising.

“Roger,” said Benjen into the radio, then turned around to look at Jon and Arya in the back seat. “You two can get the Thermal Imaging Cameras ready when we’re on the ground, we’ll check the potential structural compromise.” He lifted the mouthpiece up again and spoke to Tormund. “We’re almost there to start things off. We’ll need to access the potential collapse zone and prepare the defensive attack on the area.”

“Roger boss,” said the crackling voice of Tormund.

“Ugh, I hate the unstable ones,” said Arya.

“You’ll be fine. Just don’t run off and do anything stupid,” Benjen said as he hung up the radio.

“Aye, don’t be a fucking hero,” added Sandor. Arya was a competent firefighter, but had the tendency to be reckless in some situations.

“I know, I know,” Arya said, huffing. “Oh look, Sansa sent me a photo. She’s giving Bluebell a bath.”

“Isn’t Bluebell a monkey?”

“No, Uncle Benjen, she’s a sloth,” said Jon, sounding far more knowledgeable than he usually did. “Both are from Sothoryos but one jumps around and the other just kind of sits.”

Arya snorted. “Bluebell doesn’t sit, it’s more like a cling. Sansa basically wears her all day.”

Sandor’s heart beat a little faster every time he heard Miss Stark’s name.

Sandor could imagine what Sansa looked like. He had met so many members of her family, after all, spent all day every day with them. He had even seen pictures of Arya with various dark-haired women on the odd occasion that he braved social media, and one of them must be her. It would have been possible to search for Miss Stark on the same social media platforms, he supposed, but that seemed wrong somehow. He wanted one day to meet her in person, not look her up on the internet first. Sometimes in his more whimsical moments he pictured her in the kitchen making that fancy fucking pie crust. She would be raven haired and slight. Grey eyes, a faint scowl. Just like all the other Starks.

“Ugh I’m ready for this shift to be over,” said Arya. “I want to watch the newest episode of Westerosi Assassin.”

Benjen looked over his shoulder again. “Arya, we’ll be here for hours yet.”

“All the more reason to get this fire sorted. Collapse or no collapse.”

“Focus, Arya,” said Benjen sternly. “I don’t want to be the one to tell my brother you’ve fucked up and gotten some horrific burns.”

A brief but noticeable pause fell upon the cab of the truck. It always happened every time someone mentioned burns around him.

“Sorry Sandor,” Benjen said, the apology clear in his voice. “That was a shitty thing to say.”

Sandor made a dismissive gesture. “Doesn’t fucking matter.”

Nothing anyone might say could change the wreck of his face.

Sandor turned the truck down Wolfsbridge street. The thick oily smoke from the fire clogged the street worse than the traffic.

His instinctive horror of fire hit him every time he saw a burning building. As was second nature now, he touched his ruined cheek and reminded himself of why he fought fires for a living.

He would defeat them. Kill them. Put out fires and destroy his fears at the same time. Every fire he extinguished was a victory over the death of his spirit that Gregor had tried to inflict but had ultimately failed to achieve. Every guttering fire represented a triumph of his will to survive.

Soothed, his thoughts drifted again.

What would Miss Stark think of his fucked-up face? So intimately touched by fire as he was. Oddly, he did not think she’d mind as much as some women did.

She had sent dog-shaped cookies along to the station for his nameday. How had she known he liked dogs? How had she known it was his nameday? He barely remembered it at the best of times. He certainly never celebrated the occasion.

She had included a note, thanking him for taking care of her family, for keeping them safe on the job.

A thank you note. Nameday cookies. What the fuck.

Arya, the little shit, had looked smug when the gift rendered him speechless.

All he did was his job. Benjen insisted on nominating him for the commendation after that incident where he pulled Jon out of the damaged truck. And that time bloody Arya got stuck rescuing an abandoned mutt puppy in a burning warehouse, and he rescued them both. And that other time when Benjen himself got into strife with some downed power lines and Sandor extracted him. He’d just been doing his bloody job. It wasn’t like he didn’t get paid, he wasn’t a fucking charity.

And he ended up keeping the puppy.

He glanced up at the photo of Stranger taped to the sun visor. Getting that big fucker was worth more than all those commendations anyway,

The building was well ablaze when he parked the truck and jumped out. Pulling on the final pieces of protective equipment was second nature, but he always followed procedures. Any mistakes that impaired the functioning of the equipment might prove fatal.

“Gendry wants to host a barbecue at my place,” said Arya as she checked the seals on Benjen’s respirator. “But that depends on if Sansa has any bat burritos at the time. We can’t have visitors who haven’t been vaccinated when she’s got babies in the house.”

Sandor made a mental note to ask what the fuck bat burritos were. After the fire.

“Why can’t Gendry host it at his place?” asked Jon, raising his voice as he walked to stand beside the truck and check valves. “And why does it have to be a barbecue? I would pay money for Hot Pie’s fried chicken. Or his curry, gods.”

Arya snorted as she turned around so her uncle could do the checks on her protective equipment. “Lommy went vegan.”

“Again? Anyway, curry can be vegan,” said Jon.

“Yeah they didn’t want to risk any more naked protests. Easier to host stuff at my place.” Arya shook her head. “Poor Gendry. Even Sansa’s wildlife babies are more housebroken than bloody Lommy.”

Benjen clapped his hands. “Enough gossip, more firefighting. You two need to run the Thermal Imaging check.”

Sandor glanced over Benjen’s shoulder at the flames. It really looked like a bad one.

The fear threatened to overwhelm him again.

In that moment, another memory struck him. A couple of months back, he’d been sick with a bout of the seasonal flu that always hit Winterfell at that time of year. Gendry showed up at his apartment, holding a huge pot of chicken soup courtesy of Miss Stark. She had been unable to leave a baby pangolin, Gendry explained, but Arya told her about his illness, and Miss Stark had made him the soup to help him feel better.

It was a ridiculously kind thing to do for someone. The carrots in it had been carefully cut into the shape of stars. Stars!

The gesture made him feel valuable, like he was actually worth giving a shit about. From a stranger.

He scowled at the fire and prepared himself for the danger and fear.

Aye, he was half in love with a woman he had never even met.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not a firefighter, so apologies for any mistakes made. I did a ton of research for this chapter, but that is of course no replacement for first-hand knowledge.
> 
> Also! I’ve used ‘ground floor’ to describe the ground level storey of a building and ‘second floor’ to describe the floor directly above that. Terms can vary depending on what kind of English you speak so I thought I’d clarify it first 😊

Benjen ordered the standard two firefighters inside / two firefighters outside procedure, since their target was just a small building of two storeys. Arya and Jon took reconnaissance duties inside the building to find the source of the fire after they’d conducted structural checks and punched holes through the roof to keep an oxygen supply going and hopefully prevent a dangerous backdraft. Flames already licked through the holes. Sandor stayed with Benjen to perform fire suppression on the outside of the building, since it was situated in an industrial park and neighbouring buildings sat close by.

Benjen radioed for backup, but the nearest truck and crew were on their way from a fire in Winter Town and gave an estimated time of arrival of approximately twenty minutes.

Arya and Jon located what they deemed to be the fire source in a second storey room and began the interior attack from the stairwell whilst Sandor and Benjen supported them from outside.

While Sandor would never let his guard down around a burning building, it seemed to be a straightforward enough job. He and Benjen chatted as they worked, in the moments that they could hear each other over the roar of the water.

“I think my niece might get engaged soon,” said Benjen, suddenly, his voice muffled behind his mask. “About time. I do like a good wedding.”

Cold horror gripped his heart and Sandor dropped the heavy, fully charged hose they’d both been holding, causing Benjen to stumble under the weight of the spouting end.

Engaged? But Sansa was single as far as he knew?

How could she be engaged?

Sandor swallowed heavily and picked up the hose with a muttered apology, focusing on the task at hand.

Fucks sake. Miss Stark existed so tangled up in his head that he was now fucking up his job to thoughts of her. What kind of idiot firefighter dropped a hose?

“I thought she was single?” he said, his voice sounding thick even behind his protective gear.

This news should not devastate him.

That was inappropriate.

He had never even met Sansa.

Benjen turned to give him a strange look, the jet of water wobbling as he did so. “Arya?” he shouted over the background noise. “No, she’s with Gendry, remember? I caught her looking at maiden’s cloaks on her phone. I think she’s planning to pop the question any day now.”

Arya.

Because Benjen has two nieces.

Fuck he really was an idiot.

He focused on doing his job like a fucking professional instead of a lovesick fool, continuously monitoring the building for any changes whilst Benjen took charge of the coms when needed.

Arya and Jon were still working on extinguishing the blaze from the inside when Sandor noticed the windows on part of the second floor, nearest where their last reported position was, had gone black. The roof had partially collapsed over it, sealing the air holes.

“Seven Hells, there’s a backdraft forming,” Sandor called out to Benjen as he pointed to the blackened windows at the far end of the building.

“Shit,” said Benjen, looking worried as he grabbed the radio. “Jon, you and Arya get out of there. We’ve got a backdraft situation.”

The potential for a backdraft was fucking terrifying and Sandor felt a wave of horror shiver down his spine. A backdraft could form when sealed rooms became oxygen depleted during a fire, and combustible gases gathered. If oxygen was then reintroduced, such as through an opened door or a broken window, the whole fucking thing would ignite and cause an explosion. It was something all firefighters tried desperately to avoid, and a major cause of firefighter fatalities. Blackened or cracked windows, yellow or brown smoke, changes in smoke flow were all signs they got trained to watch out for.

“Roger that,” said Jon’s voice over the coms. “Arya noticed the smoke being pulled into the far room so we’re moving out now.”

Muffled cursing in Arya’s voice sounded in the background but Sandor was relieved she had spotted the warning sign before it was too late.

Tense moments passed.

“We’ll break the furthest window once Jon and Arya are clear of the building to get some ventilation going and try to control it that way,” said Benjen, but as soon as he’d spoken an explosion ripped through the room they’d been observing.

They both staggered as the flames shot out from the windows with a roar. Glass and debris rained around them.

Sandor ducked instinctively, his horror of fire briefly overcoming his training before he pulled himself together. He stood up and grabbed the hose again, facing his fear.

“Shit, status report,” growled Benjen into the coms before the billows of flame had even a chance to settle.

Jon’s voice crackled over the radio. “We’re alive, we made it back to the ground floor. We’ll need an extraction though. Just had some timbers collapse around us and Arya’s hurt.”

Benjen’s voice sounded calm and professional. “How bad is it?”

“The explosion cracked my mask, and the smoke is bad here. We’ll be right under where the fire is on the floor above.” Jon’s voice was husky, and he stopped to cough. “Arya’s leg is pinned under some timber.”

“I’ll order the extraction team,” said Benjen automatically.

Looking at the fire it was obvious to Sandor that standard procedure would take too long. The second floor might collapse at any moment, crushing Jon and Arya on the ground floor.

“No time, captain.” Sandor spoke finally. “You man the hose for fire suppression, I’ll go and get them.”

Benjen shook his head. “It’s a bloody death trap, Clegane. They are my family, I’ll go in.”

“No fucking way. I’ve got a better chance of surviving. I’m a big fucker, hard to kill.” Not giving his captain a chance to argue, Sandor ran into the burning building. He had rescued his colleagues before in other difficult situations, he wasn’t going to let this fire win.

“Fucks sake Clegane.” Benjen’s voice came over his coms, but he sounded resigned.

Visibility was poor on the inside, but the layout of the building seemed straightforward from what they had determined by their initial imaging. He wondered what Miss Stark would say about the situation. She seemed like the type to worry about them.

Sandor’s therapist said that his habit of sending his thoughts to a different place when confronted with a terrifying reality developed as a response to his childhood trauma. Sandor was no expert, but he preferred to have his thoughts dwell someplace safe, rather than be faced with a fiery reality whilst his body worked on auto-pilot.

The smoke swirled thick and dark as he made his way through the ground floor, the heat nigh on unbearable from the floor above.

For the first time he considered he might actually die here, if the whole fucking floor above collapsed, weakened as it would be from the backdraft. He tried not to have regrets in his life, no point snivelling about what a fucked-up face made him miss, but he had some notable ones.

One of the times he’d missed meeting Sansa Stark had been closer than the others. He felt like an asshole about it and if years of therapy for his childhood trauma taught him anything, it was not to dwell on shit like that. But here, in one of the Seven Hells bought to life, he stood reminded of his regret.

He’d gone up to the bunk he liked to sleep in at the station after a particularly shit call out with civilian casualties. The fire crew didn’t have assigned bunks, but everyone at the station knew that one was his.

Absolutely everyone.

In the quiet corner, extra leg room. Near a window and farthest away from the bathroom. No sane person wanted to be near the bathroom once Tormund had been in it.

Sandor had found a person asleep in his bunk, all bundled up in blankets. They were just a blanket covered lump, he’d had no idea who would have been stupid enough to steal his work bed. Anger at the person burned hot, a fire in his belly.

He had stormed downstairs into the work room, ranting like a crazy fucker to his colleagues about his bed being stolen, then gone for a fucking jog instead of sleeping because he’d been so pissed off and exercise was also part of his therapy.

The jog helped, he had calmed the fuck down and arrived back at the station to find Jon changing the sheets on that bunk. Snow had apologised to Sandor about it. Turns out his cousin Miss Stark had been by to drop off steak and vegetable pasties shaped to resemble direwolf heads. She’d apparently had a sleepless night after a nasty phone call with her cunt ex, and ended up taking a nap at the station because she was so tired.

Seven Hells, Sandor had felt like a cunt himself. He’d have had the chance to meet Sansa if he’d been less of a dick about things.

Sandor shook his head. This pining for a stranger was ridiculous. If he got out of this alive, he needed to meet her. He would straight up ask Arya to introduce them.

Visibility appeared even more shit this end of the building, but he heard something as he approached what must be close to the stairwell.

Jon’s coughing was louder than the fire, and Sandor zeroed in on his colleagues. Some of the framework of an internal wall had fallen, making the burning floor above even more unstable. Arya’s leg was under a beam, and Jon crouched beside her.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” said Arya when she saw him. “You’re as bad as Jon, being here when you could get out of this shit. That roof is about to collapse, just leave me.”

Sandor scoffed. “Not fucking likely.”

Jon bent double coughing from the smoke. Sandor pulled off Jon’s broken breathing apparatus and took off his own, putting it on Jon, who feebly resisted. Acrid smoke filled Sandor’s lungs and he ducked down as low as possible to try to lessen the amount of smoke he breathed.

Jon breathed the clean compressed air in, then shook his head. “I can’t take this, you need it.”

“We can share,” Sandor lied, to get Snow to shut the fuck up and get moving. “Don’t fucking waste time, let’s pull these timbers away and get the fuck out of here.”

Moving the rubble away from Arya risked further collapse, but between him and Jon they managed it. Arya staggered to her feet using his hand as leverage then yelped in pain before sitting back down again abruptly.

“My fucking ankle is broken,” Arya growled.

Sandor pulled Jon’s broken airpack on himself, which was better than nothing, then slung a cursing Arya over his shoulder.

“I could carry her,” said Jon, swaying on the spot.

“My dog weighs more than this little shit does,” said Sandor, slinging his free arm around Snow to support him. It was true, Arya was tiny, even fully decked out in protective gear.

His treacherous brain wondered if Sansa Stark, presumably just as diminutive as her sister, would ever object to being picked up like this. Like he was a Wildling stealing his bride.

“Fuck off, you giant bastard,” Arya’s voice from behind him was muffled but clear and strong. “Don’t be sizeist.”

“Let’s move before this thing caves in and we do die,” Sandor said between coughs as he started to retrace his steps, regretfully putting Miss Stark out of his mind. Again.

He could fucking feel the damage the smoke did on every breath he took. Smoke inhalation was one of a firefighters worst enemies, as deadly as any risk they took in defeating their burning foe. He bent forward as far as he could for every breath without dropping Arya, but the air swirled thick with smoke, choking and deadly.

Trying to breathe was one big coughing fit, but he carried on moving forward with his colleagues. This fire would not defeat him.

The entry to the building had caved in when they reached it, leaving a concerningly small gap to the outside of the building and safety.

Without hesitating or apologising he shoved Arya bodily through it, with no regards to how she would land on her broken ankle. Her howl of pain indicated that it was not comfortably.

“You go,” he said to Jon. “I won’t fit, I’ll find another way.”

Jon pulled Sandor’s airpack off and returned it to him. “Take this at least,” Jon said. “And we’ll clear the way from the other side. You pull some debris away and you’ll fit if we help you.”

Sandor suspected from the pain blooming in his chest that the damage he’d sustained from the smoke was already bad, but he put his unbroken breathing apparatus back on to get Jon to stop fussing and squeeze through the existing gap.

Some more debris fell near him and he flinched, bile rising in this throat. Now both his colleagues were safe and outside, this was far fucking closer than he wanted to get to an out of control fire.

He didn’t have much sensation on the fucked-up side of his face, but he felt the heat from the fire making his scars tingle, even through his gear.

As he fell to his knees, coughing so much he couldn’t breathe, he vaguely saw Benjen and the back-up crew through the small gap, but they may as well be a thousand miles away.

After all he had survived in his life, getting taken out in a fire was a fucking ironic way for him to die.

He wished he had gotten a chance to meet Miss Stark after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be 100% more sloth-related content in the next chapter.... 😊


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience, lovely reader! Just one more chapter to go after this one 😊

Sandor awoke in an unfamiliar bed, with Stranger snoring next to him.

He frowned and looked around, then coughed as the movement aggravated his chest. Fucking smoke inhalation tried to kill him, he remembered, touching the soft prongs sticking in his nose, gently hissing with oxygen. Stranger whined and rolled over.

Someone had positioned various medical devices, including an oxygen tank and a tray of pill containers, on the table beside him. There was a glass of water sitting in front of a jug too, condensation beading on the outside of both indicating they were still cold. The bed was covered by a teal coloured quilt, with a darker floral pattern across it. Presumably black dog hair too, with Stranger on top of it and twitching as he dreamed. It looked like a woman’s room, with a large mirror above the dresser that had some colourful necklaces draped over one corner and perfume bottles on the surface in front. Framed photos dotted the walls, though his eyes started watering as he tried to focus, and he couldn’t make out the pictures they contained.

His memory came back in fits and starts as he examined the surroundings.

He realised with a jolt that he was in the house where the Stark sisters lived.

He remembered being at the hospital, with a doctor telling him that discharge was an option, but only if he had a caregiver nearby at all times. Benjen had offered to take him, but Arya had strongarmed her way in and insisted that he would get better care at her house. He’d been too out of it on all this medication to protest being rehomed like an unruly hound.

He coughed again and grimaced. Memories came back thick and fast now. They had wheeled him into the house last night. It had seemed like crowds of people were there to help. Gendry pushed his wheelchair, and Arya had bossed her boyfriend around as she leaned on her crutches. Jon had been there, looking battered but otherwise fine and the elder Starks, Benjen and Ned, stood beside him. Benjen had had Stranger with him, the huge ugly dog making low ‘boof’ barks and straining at his leash as he saw Sandor. One of Arya’s friends had been there, a tall, sexy ginger who looked vaguely familiar. Probably from Arya’s social media posts. The ginger had watched proceedings with a stunned expression on her face. Not that he had been sneaking glimpses at her. He was only a man after all, red-blooded enough to admire a hot woman when he saw one. His memory of her was very clear.

Guilt flashed through him, quickly suppressed. He might have a slightly vexing attachment to the mysterious Miss Stark, but it didn’t render him unable to appreciate beauty.

He tried to relax back in the bed, even though Stranger, a Riverlands mastiff, was taking up an ungodly amount of room. Luckily it was a king-sized bed, so his feet didn’t hang off the end and both he and the enormous dog could fit.

The sexy ginger from last night swept into the room, wearing, of all things, a soft pink blanket safety pinned over the front of her clothes. Arya was hot on her heels, clunking at speed on her crutches.

He would have thought he was still sleeping, except his chest fucking hurt.

He coughed again and the unknown woman tutted and pressed her cool, elegant hand against his forehead. She didn’t seem to care that she was touching his scars. Was she a nurse? Why on planetos was she wearing a blanket?

He looked between Arya and the red-head, who took a step back from the bed. Arya stared at him, studying him appraisingly. The other woman smiled encouragingly.

“Who the fuck are you?” he said to the ginger.

She looked startled, then smiled again. “Oh. I’m Sansa,” she said. “Hi.”

There was a lengthy pause as Sandor’s worldview was suddenly and forcibly upended.

He stared dumbly at her for what seemed like an eternity.

The only sound was the hiss of his oxygen supply.

Her smile dimmed a touch.

Was this a practical joke? He looked at Arya, whose expression had become quizzical.

His gaze swivelled back to the woman. “No,” he blurted. “No, you aren’t. That’s not possible.”

The commotion disturbed Stranger, who raised his head and gave an indignant huff, before falling again into slumber.

The most beautiful woman Sandor had ever seen, who was apparently fucking with him, tilted her head to the side, a frown appearing between her brows. “Yes I am.”

“Obviously you can’t be,” he said, increasingly frantic. He tried to sit up, but his traitorous body resisted his attempts.

The ginger leaned over him, blanket tenting downwards, to put a gentle hand on his shoulder, stifling his feeble efforts to move. “I’m definitely Sansa,” she said softly. “It’s lovely to meet you at last, Sandor.”

He stared at her like a dumb cunt, paralysed by the way she smelled delicately of lemons, vanilla and earthy moss, of all things.

His ability to talk seemed to have deserted him.

Arya shot him a concerned look as the silence stretched on uncomfortably long. “Maybe we should drug him again,” she said, standing up and swinging herself towards the collection of pill bottles.

Sandor coughed again. “What?” he succeeded in rasping between hacks, his voice finally cooperating.

“No, Arya thinks she’s funny,” the red-headed goddess said soothingly. “We’ve just been giving you the prescribed amounts.”

A squeaking noise came from her vicinity and she unpinned and twitched the blanket away. He saw that she was wearing a baby sling, with a small brown head poking out of the top.

It was an animal, he realised. A… sloth? He’d seen enough Aemon Targaryen wildlife documentaries to recognise a sloth when he saw one.

This was, without doubt, the fucking weirdest day of his life.

Sandor stared stupidly at her again.

The ginger frowned, which looked incredibly sexy on her beautiful, not-Stark face. “I’ll fetch you some lemon cheesecake. I made one yesterday, there is plenty left. Cheesecake always helps me settle when I feel out of sorts.”

She and the tiny sloth swept out of the room.

What the fuck was going on?

She was the opposite of what he’d imagined.

“That’s your sister,” he said slowly, staring at the doorway still.

“Well, obviously,” said Arya impatiently, sitting back in her seat and tapping her uninjured foot on the floor.

“She’d not what I…” Sandor launched into another coughing fit.

Arya leaned back in her chair and folded her arms, waiting for him to finish. “You stupid shit,” she said when he’d stopped, scowling fiercely. “Why would you half kill yourself to save us?”

Sandor grabbed his cold water from the table and took a long drink, which seemed to help.

“You can fuck right off if you think I’d ever leave my colleagues in a burning building,” he said, his voice cooperating for once. “Is that why you kidnapped me? To fucking shout at me?”

“I’M NOT SHOUTING AT YOU,” she shouted, gripping the arms of the chair.

He raised his eyebrow.

Arya adopted a mulish expression. “Anyway, Sansa insisted we look after you. Count yourself lucky she wore down Uncle Benjen on that front. He can’t cook for shit.”

Sandor took another drink. Someone had placed a slice of lemon in the glass, cut into the shape of a star. It had to be Sansa. Star-shaped lemon slices were not Arya’s style. “Kidnap me? No one gave me a choice about this arrangement,” he said finally.

Arya rolled her eyes. “Look after you.”

Sandor coughed again.

“This is her room, you know,” said Arya when he’d stopped. “She’s stuck sharing my bed until the air mattress we ordered arrives, so you’d better be grateful. She’s freakishly tall and takes up too much space. And she kicks in her sleep.”

“She’s not freakishly tall,” Sandor said reflexively, height differences being a common joke between all the firefighters, “you’re just freakishly short.”

Arya laughed. “There’s the Sandor we know and barely tolerate.” She grinned as she spoke.

Sandor placed his water back on the table and looked around the room again. His eyes were working better and some of the closer photos had the Starks that he recognised, along with Sansa and other hot gingers, including a middle-aged red-headed woman holding Ned’s hand.

Arya followed his gaze. “Family photos,” she said. “Sansa and my brothers look like Mum, I look like Dad.”

Sandor snorted, triggering another coughing fit. If only he had met more Starks, he might have made less of an arse of himself not recognising Sansa.

Arya stood up, adjusting her crutches. “I’m going to go and watch TV in the living room, and pretend there’s not a koala sitting on a chunk of tree in there.”

Sandor blinked. “A what sitting on a what the fuck?”

“You’ll see. Consider it motivation to get your lazy arse out of bed soon.” Arya paused at the door, leaning on one crutch. “If you hear a kind of unholy grunting wail, that’s the reason. Apparently it’s koala mating season.”

With that startling pronouncement, she left. Sandor scratched Stranger’s ears, though the lazy shit stayed asleep.

Sansa and the sloth came back bearing a slice of lemon cheesecake, but this time the animal was in a basket. Sandor could see its little brown face peering at him. Sansa carried the sloth basket with one hand and his cheesecake with the other.

Sandor tried to study her without looking like a fucking creep. The only thing the Stark sisters seemed to have in common with how they looked was the determined set of their mouths.

She placed the sloth basket on the floor and put the cheesecake aside on the bedside table. She fussed around his bed setting up a tray and he started coughing again.

Sansa tsked and checked his oxygen supply, fiddling with the various dials and tubes.

“I didn’t know you were a nurse,” he rasped when he had stopped coughing.

She pinned him with her gaze. She was close enough for him to see her eyes were a clear blue, the kind of blue that would inspire sweet words in epic poems. Luckily he wasn’t enough of a daft cunt to write poetry, so he just stuck to thinking that they were the colour of the sky on a clear Northern winters day.

“I’m not a nurse,” she said with another smile, leaning over him to fix the tubes attached to his face. “But I have learned a lot looking after animals, and I’ve started studying veterinary sciences part time at Winter Town University. Humans are just animals too, after all.”

If there was anyone in the world he didn’t mind adjusting his nose prongs, he decided, it was her.

There was a faint “Eeh” noise from the basket, and Sansa looked over her shoulder at it. “I’ll be with you in a moment, Bluebell,” she said.

“You named your sloth Bluebell?” he asked, following her gaze towards the tiny creature. The sloth blinked sleepily at him.

Sansa shrugged. “You named your dog Stranger?” she replied. Stranger twitched slightly at the mention of his name. “Anyway, she’s not my sloth as such. We rescued her from an illegal wildlife collector. While she’s a baby she needs close care, but when she’s grown she’ll hopefully be released back into the jungle.”

Sansa placed the cheesecake on the tray in front of Sandor. The neat wedge was positioned perfectly in the middle of the plate, and she’d sprinkled a faint dusting of powdered sugar over it. A sprig of mint sat to the side, along with a small sugar cookie in the shape of a wolf.

He stared at the magnificent dessert. It was like being in a restaurant, except he was sitting in bed with a variety of tubes attached to his person, and there was a sloth in a basket on the floor.

“Let me know what you think,” said Sansa cheerfully. “I used two of my fresh vanilla pods to give it a depth of flavour with the lemon, but Arya always says she can never tell the difference between those and vanilla extract and that I’m just wasting my money on pods.”

Sandor nodded dumbly, having no opinions on vanilla but still stunned from the entire situation.

He took a careful bite of the cheesecake as Sansa lifted the sloth out of the basket. The little animal attached herself to Sansa’s sweater clad front, even without the baby sling she’d previously been wearing.

“Here you go, sweetling,” crooned Sansa, retrieving a tiny tree branch from the basket and handing it to Bluebell.

“Eeh,” said Bluebell again, taking the branch in her claws and starting to chew on the leaves.

Sansa smiled like a proud parent.

His mouth tasted weird as fuck, presumably a side effect from the oxygen shooting up his nose, but the cheesecake still tasted good. He wasn’t sure about the vanilla, only that the flavour as a whole was nice.

“The nurse will be in tomorrow to take out your catheter,” Sansa said briskly, as she flittered around the room tidying things up. Bluebell kept eating, seemingly unmoved by the motion.

Sandor winced. He didn’t want to think about that tube.

“But we’ll get you up and walking then,” Sansa continued. “You can come through to the living room and meet Lucky Jack.”

Sandor nodded and kept eating. Lucky Jack must be the koala. He fancied he could hear a low “Ooah” call over the hiss of the oxygen, coming from another part of the house.

“Benjen said he saw some Mighty Hound dog food at your house, so I’ve bought some of that for Stranger. I also got a nice meaty aurochs bone from the butcher for when he wakes up,” she returned to the bed and patted the sleeping dog, smiling fondly.

Sandor blinked at her. “Aye,” he said, a wholly inadequate response to all the things she’d done for him. He took the last mouthful of cheesecake. It really was delicious. He willed himself not to start coughing again. “Thanks.”

He did cough then, but she seemed to accept his words.

She took the empty plate and started messing around with his pill bottles and refilling his water from the jug. "Time for the next dose of medicine," she murmured. 

He flopped back on the pillows when his coughing fit had finished.

She handed him the handful of his prescribed medication and watched like a wolf guarding her pack as he obediently took them all.

She smoothed his hair back off his face as he lay there and tucked the sheets around him.

He thought he caught a flash of… something as she looked at him, but he was too tired to consider it as his eyes drooped and he fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (We have a couple of koalas who live in the nature reserve behind our house, and yes they are adorable but the sounds they make are positively alarming 😂)


End file.
